Commissioned for Flux Night Atlanta Georgia in October 2013, ATL 2067 was developed for a one night free public event in Castleberry Hill.

ATL 2067 imagines a future Atlanta. The project reanimates music recordings fixed during the early days of the recording industry produced in temporary studios in hotel rooms and function rooms across the city of Atlanta – and controlled under copyright in the USA until 2067. Late 1920s Atlanta witnessed a flurry of recording activity, with labels travelling south from New York collect music of the surrounding area – from blues to cajun folk via country. At this moment collectively-authored music and lyrics were locked to apparent authors and fixed to the commodity form of the gramophone record.

Working with local hip-hop producers, 78rpm recordings from the 1920s were reassembled into the rhythmic matrix of rap beats. Folk cultures of the beginnings of the 20th Century plugged directly into the beat cultures of the beginnings of the 21st – rap, trap, and ghetto-tech.

A street-level sound system was installed at the corner of Walker's Street and Peter's Street in Castleberry Hill. Local emcees staHHr, J-Live, Ekundayo and Boog Brown were invited to host - performing as Master of Ceremonies - to extend an open mic invitation to the Atlanta public who were invited to rap about the future of the city. For five hours people stepped from the crowd to improvise a freestyle rap cypher over the future beats.

The project reactivates archival material generated by an early 20th Century Georgia public by inserting it back into the rhythmic milieu of contemporary Atlanta to collectively envisage and perform a potential future. The temporary sound system and assembled public occupied an optimistic future – 2067, the year that the collectively authored material will finally return to public ownership and envisaged an imminent public domain.

ATL 2067 imagines a future Atlanta. 1920s recordings from the city, fixed during the early days of the recording industry and controlled under copyright in the USA until 2067, mutate into new beats for emcees and rappers. Special guest hosts bring exclusive live performances: